"I'm sorry to hear that the truth insults you." – Edward Snowden is a FUCKING HERO

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The time has come to move on to other things in life. Yes, Fake Chuck is retiring. You can read all about it by clicking here, where you’ll also find out who Fake Chuck really was all this time.

Thanks to everyone who supported the FCW blog in the past years. We went through a lot together; frustration, anger, we laughed, we cried, we pissed off Canon fanboys as well as Nikon fanboys. All those moments will forever live on in our memories.

Fake Chuck’s work here is done. It’s up to you now to remain critical of Canon so that things don’t go downhill again. Nikon is currently seriously fucked, and we have to make sure this doesn’t happen to Canon again, or else we’ll all suffer the consequences like we did 6 years ago.

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Aaah yes, Valentine’s Day. A special day for most people, but an especially special day for me and my relationship with Canon Inc. A lot can be said about our relationship, but nobody will ever be able to truly appreciate what we have together. Back when I started this blog, there was a lot of doubt about my true motivations for doing so. I want to take the opportunity today to tell you something very important. And that is that LOVE was the only motivation I had back then when I started this blog. Not just any kind of love, but true LOVE.

It’s the kind of love that lasts forever, no matter what happens. We can have our differences, we can fight and have arguments, hell, our paths can even separate and take our lives into different directions. But our LOVE for each other always remains, burning like an eternal flame in our hearts. And as they say, what’s meant to be together, will always find a way.

Sure, I’ve had a lot of criticisms and said a lot of harsh things about Canon Inc. in the past — all very valid in my opinion. But it’s precisely BECAUSE of my LOVE for Canon Inc. that I did that. I’ve worked for this company for a great deal of my life now, and I want this company to succeed. I want our customers to be happy. I want to wake up every day and be motivated to come to the office and play with my toys. I want that shit to actually fucking work the way it’s supposed to. And that’s why I continue to push very hard to ensure that Canon Inc. does its best to stay the best in this industry. If that means that I have to bash some of our products, then that’s what will happen. If it means that I have to call Maeda along with other executives and harass him on the phone, then that’s what will happen. If it means that I have to put my health at risk and spend a couple of nights in intensive care, then that’s what will happen. You get the point.

When you LOVE, you CARE. And when you CARE, you try your best to help the ones you LOVE to improve and to succeed. You’ll always be brutally honest to them, because you know it’s for their best interests in the long term. And really, that’s always been my motivation for wasting a great deal of my valuable free time writing posts on this blog, only to give people the impression that I’m probably crazy or have no life, or possibly both.

It’s exactly 5 years ago today that I received the heartwarming love letter from Canon Inc.’s lawyers, ordering me to shut down my blog. February 14th, 2009. I’ll never forget that day. It was the kind of event where you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it happened, for the rest of your life. You know, kinda like how it is with the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. Getting such a letter on any other day of the year is significant enough, but the fact that I got it on Valentine’s Day reveals its true purpose. There can be no doubt that this was an expression of LOVE from Canon Inc. — an answer to my own strong feelings of LOVE towards them. Thanks to their very thoughtful and touching letter, this blog got a ton of exposure that I would never have been able to achieve on my own. Like I mentioned above, when you LOVE someone, you try your best to help them succeed, even if you have to be a little harsh sometimes. And this was definitely Canon Inc. helping me to succeed.

In the years that followed my LOVE for Canon Inc. has only gotten stronger. So today, on this very special day, I will drink to this special relationship and celebrate the time that we’ve been able to spend together. And I want to end this post with a poem that summarizes all my feelings for Canon Inc.:

Like this:

You know I don’t write you often, and I’m not one to beg for gifts, but this year I feel that I should make an exception. I know you don’t usually get letters from men in their fifties, and I understand if you may, at least initially, be a bit surprised. But if you’re like me — and I know I am — then you’ll at least continue reading out of sheer curiosity instead of immediately moving on to the next letter.

I’ve been here arguing for over 5 years on my blog that Canon Inc., my employer, should focus more on image quality instead of megapixels. It seems — and you’ll have to excuse my French — the fucking assholes at the marketing department at Canon Inc. just can’t get my message through their heads. And if they can, they apparently lack the brian capacity to process what I’m saying. Honest to God, I’ve given up to try and understand what it is that is blocking their mental capacities, but I’ve come to suspect that they’ve sustained major brain damage due to the chronic sexual repression that currently plagues the Japanese society. At least that’s my leading hypothesis right now. I mean, I don’t know about you and Mrs. Santa and how willing she is to satisfy your needs, but not being able to have sex in a normal and healthy way, as the case is right now in Japan, will drive you fucking crazy.

So being the kind of unselfish and caring person that I am, I would like to ask you if you could deliver some new and working brains for the entire marketing department at Canon Inc. this coming Christmas. And if it’s not too much to ask, also some fucking clues about what professionals actually need and are asking for in this industry, as opposed to the goddamn amateurs who think megapixels is the holy grail of photography. I know those guys over there are really going to appreciate it if you could do this.

Stand back with your puny 1DX, Uncle Bob’s got the moment with his new 41MP watch

I mean, seriously Santa, just recently I almost fell off of my chair here at the office, when a watch was announced with a 41MP camera built in. A fucking watch!! Soon my goddamn microwave oven is going to be capable of taking 41MP+ images of the food I’m heating up that look awful as fuck. If Canon Inc. doesn’t realize now that megapixels don’t matter, but instead the quality of pixels, then they never will. And this is not going to be good for my health Santa, so please consider doing what I ask if you don’t want me to show up at the North Pole to kick your ass.

:'(

And on a final note Santa, if you’re on your way to Japan, do you think you could perhaps fly by some countries in the middle east and take down a few of those drones that fucking scumbag Barack Obama is currently flying over there? Innocent families and children are dying there almost every week because they’re being bombed by those drones, and it fucking pains me to see this going on while nobody the fuck says something about it. People have no empathy these days, it would seem. Why is that Santa? Why?

Fuck you Obama. Fuck you very much.

Do you think you could intercept some of those drones and have Rudolph,
Dasher and the other reindeers kick them down or something? Perhaps navigate your sleigh close enough so a well aimed kick to the left or right with their back legs on the wings can break and send them crashing down? Would that be too much to ask, Santa? I think you would do the world a great service if you could do this Santa. And especially the poor children in those countries who have to grow up in fear of being bombed and either die or spend the rest of their lives homeless and disabled. Just look at the video below Santa, and tell me it doesn’t break your heart to see those kids crying and suffering like that?

As you see Santa, I’ve so far mostly asked you to help others, but as for myself, there are some things that I wish for and maybe you can help me as well. I would appreciate it a lot if you could also tell the Japanese to fucking update the old EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens this coming year because it is fucking soft and Nikon has had an advantage with the 14-24mm f/2.8 for way too long now. Canon Inc. needs to fucking release a sharp 14-24mm f/2.8L lens soon now because I’m tired of waiting. It should be as good as the latest 24-70mm f/2.8L II in terms of image quality. Please make sure you tell them when you’re there ok? The 35mm f/1.4L II and other lenses can wait. We fucking need a sharp wide angle large aperture zoom.

Merry Christmas.

That’s it Santa, many thanks in advance, and I look forward to having my wishes here fulfilled.

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I wrote a few weeks ago about a new book on lighting titled “Direction & Quality of Light” by Van Niekerk and I told you all to order it if you know what’s good for you. I’d be a total fucking hypocrite if I didn’t go ahead and order one for myself after telling you to do so. So here’s proof that I did get my own copy. Because it’s fucking good. And not only that, but I ordered my SIGNED copy directly from the vampire slayer himself.

Signed baby, signed.

Those of you paying close attention to the pictures will notice how I strategically placed the book between some of our test gear lying here in my office. I figured Van Niekerk would really appreciate his book surrounded by top quality state of the art Canon gear after everything he had to say about our poor quality control (of which incidentally he’s right). And you have to admit, the Canon logo does look cool next to his signature.

The pictures were shot using the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Lens. A lot of morons write to me every week about this lens not having IS, despite the fact that this lens is so sharp it could crack your monitor viewing images at 100% as we discussed on this blog before. Just take a look at the 100% crop below.

100% crop, click to enlarge

There’s more to image quality than just IS. So you retards complaining to me had better recognize and stop spamming my goddamn inbox and wasting my bandwidth and hard drive space.

And in case you were wondering, as far as I know, Van Niekerk has no clue who ordered this book and who he signed it for. But I’ll tell you this though, all the pictures of gorgeous women I’m seeing in the book are indeed making me do certain things in new ways, if you know what I mean.

In other news, I’ve been playing for a while now with some of our upcoming bodies. Been having mixed feelings about a lot of things going on here right now. For one, I can’t seem to convince Tokyo about the fucking megapixels they keep stuffing on the new sensors. Then there’s the marketing teams who come up with all kinds of retarded feature sets for new bodies. Who the fuck uses a goddamn 9 point AF system these days? Honestly? Nikon just released the D7100 with a frikkin’ 51 point AF system at $1200! Only 15 cross type points and not very sensitive, admittedly, but at least people have more options compared to our ancient 9 point system, which even made it into the $2000 6D and totally fucked it up. Apparently Tokyo is of the opinion that everyone using a 6D composes pictures with the subject right in the fucking center of the frame every time. People write in asking me which camera to choose and I always recommend the D600 instead of our own 6D. Because that’s how I am and that’s how you guys know me; I’m honest. I hate to bullshit people.

But more on that in another post. I need to spend some time now with a preproduction model of the new 7D.